The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a stunning video of the latest images of the James Webb Telescope before it got lost in deep space. This is the moment when the telescope lifts off from the rocket that launched it into space.
JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), the largest, most expensive and most powerful space telescope ever built, was launched from French Guiana on December 25 after countless delays and failures. The European Space Agency recently released a real-time video of the telescope detaching from the Ariane 5 launch vehicle and the subsequent development of a solar panel, a maneuver that occurred less than 30 minutes after launch.
The video streamed in real time in the early hours of December 25, but the original broadcast was poor. So the European Space Agency improved it and made it publicly available again.
By the end of January 2021, the telescope will be about to reach its final destination – L2, 1.5 million kilometers (932,056 miles) from Earth. This is far from Earth compared to its predecessor, the Hubble telescope, which was in an orbit of only 547 kilometers above Earth.
Since JWST only travels in space, it will need to be successfully deployed and developed, a powerful complex process that relies on thousands of components, 50 separate deployments and 178 editing mechanisms. Every part of this process has to work perfectly, or else the job could be compromised.
If his flight proves successful, JWST will revolutionize astronomy and our understanding of the universe. Looking into the depths of the universe, the telescope will shed light on the birth of the first galaxies and perhaps even identify distant exoplanets that could host life.
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